Truth and Illusions
by Nynaeve506
Summary: After coming back from Ba'al's base, both Jack and Sam have to grapple with everything they can't admit. Episode add-on to "Abyss", Canon-friendly.


___A/N: Former readers from here may have noticed most of my stories have disappeared. They are all publicly available on "archive of our own dot org (slash) users (slash) Nynaeve" (remove the spaces). I don't know if I'll be as faithful updating here, but I'm putting up some of my T or lower rated stories and just recommend you check my complete collection on AO3. Peace out._

_A/N2: Written for Wild Flower at Gateworld for the Secret Santa Shipmas 2012 celebration! _

_Is it you?_

The fluorescent bulb in the right corner of the room flickered. Jack stared at it. There wasn't a discernible pattern and that bothered him. He blinked and tried to will himself to look away, but he couldn't. He was transfixed by the sporadic lighting. His nose itched and when he went to lift up his hand, he found it stuck. He was restrained and that caused his heart to begin to beat rapidly as a cold sweat formed on his brow. He was trapped and any minute now, Ba'al would send his goons to drag him back to the chamber to subject him to more interrogation. Escape was his only option.

It didn't occur to Jack that the room looked nothing like his cell on Ba'al's base. He yanked one arm against the restraints to test their strength. Like fire in his veins, pain coursed upwards from his fingers to his shoulder. He screamed because there was nothing else he could do. He screamed because he wanted to be free and it hurt too much to try. He'd overcome worse, he reminded himself and he made another attempt. His agony reverberated back and forth against concrete walls. Then he saw her.

Shallan. The woman Kanan had gone to save. The woman Kanan wouldn't have given a second thought to except that the damn snake had been in his head and Jack O'Neill had a code. She was watching him from behind glass. Was she being tortured to reveal information?

"She doesn't know anything!" he yelled. "Let her go!"

Shallan bit her lip in concern. From his left a woman appeared, a short woman in a white jacket whose expression conveyed worry. She had a syringe and he shook violently as she injected it into his line.

"It's okay, Colonel," the woman assured him, although he wasn't very convinced. "You're safe now."

As darkness washed over him, it occurred to him that Shallan was dressed rather strangely for a lo'taur.

_It was her and not her at the same time. He couldn't stop staring at her eyes, blue and curious. This was Ba'al's base, but what was she doing there? His mouth was dry as she closed the distance between them, her finger reaching towards his brow. His hand lifted up without him willing it to do so and he caressed the nape of her neck as he leaned forward. He'd missed her; he'd needed her. The beginning of a kiss was tentative and unsure. Hers was the not the face he'd expected, but then, neither was his. The taste of her on his lips drew his breath from deep within his chest. _

"_Carter."_

Sam rubbed her eyes. The numbers on the computer screen were a blur and there was a gentle throb in her temple. She'd been working on this equation for the better part of two hours and if she were honest, she had to admit that she wasn't any further along than when she started. All she could think each time she put her fingers to the keyboard was how much she didn't care. Indifference wasn't her usual state of mind and it served to frustrate her even more.

"Major Carter, do you require sustenance?" Teal'c loomed in the doorway of her lab.

She gave him a tired and pathetic smile. "No. I ate…" Her gaze drifted to her watch and her eyebrows jumped up. "Oh. I guess it's been longer than I thought."

"You have been diligent in keeping vigil over Colonel O'Neill," he observed, his hands locked behind his back.

"I'm worried about him, that's all." Sam pressed her lips together. "It's not strange is it? I just feel wrong going home while he's here, going through… this."

The Jaffa took a few steps inward. "On Chulak, it is customary to stand watch over a wounded brother. It no doubt once served as protection, but after a time it became tradition. I have always believed that it gives the fallen warrior hope to know that his friends have not abandoned him during moments of great weakness."

"That's the thing," she replied, her shoulders dropping a bit, "I don't think he even knows that I'm there."

"I do not believe that, Major Carter." Teal'c stood up straighter, if that were at all possible. "I am convinced that more than any of us, Colonel O'Neill is most aware of you."

A hint of red colored Sam's cheeks and she had to look away from the scrutiny of her fellow teammate. There were doors in her life that were shut and had to remain so. Teal'c was perilously close to bringing into the open what she carefully kept hidden. The screams had been the hardest to listen to and had been what had driven her to her lab. She thought that maybe she could shut out the image of him pulling against his restraints, the terror in his eyes as he half-saw her. Instead it haunted her and stifled her ability to think.

"Maybe food is a good idea," she agreed, closing her laptop. The equations could wait.

_This wasn't his memory. This was Kanan's memory, Jack thought. Ba'al was away on business and that left Shallan free for…other things. His rough fingers ran down the smooth curve of pale skin. She was exquisite and he grasped why Ba'al had chosen her for his lo'taur. He wondered if Ba'al ever touched her the way he was touching her now. She let out a gasp as he let the tip of his tongue trace her collarbone. Looking up into her blue eyes he paused. This wasn't Shallan. _

The gray startled him every time. Jack had moments of lucidity, where he realized he was safe, that he was back on his home soil. The clarity slipped away from him though, as paranoia set in and tortured him with memories of a wheel, acid, and gravity flipped on end. He couldn't shake the thought that this was an elaborate plot. He had to stay awake. If he closed his eyes, he'd be put back in the sarcophagus and the cycle would continue.

"I'm going to tell them!" he shouted to no one in particular.

The woman in the lab coat appeared. That's how he knew she was an illusion because he never saw her enter. She was there, as though by magic, but he knew better than to believe in magic. "Colonel, can you hear me?"

"Of course I can hear you," he snapped. "You're a damn figment of my imagination. It isn't going to work!"

"Do you know who I am?"

He blinked. There was a familiarity to her features. Her brown eyes and unkempt hair, like she'd been working for hours. From the recesses of his mind he searched for a memory to give him a name. This woman. Janet Frasier. Doctor Janet Frasier.

"Doc." The word was a whisper in contrast to his unhindered hollering.

"That's right." There was relief in her face and she gave him a warm smile. "Do you know where you are?"

"Ba'al's prison," he answered reflexively. Jack wasn't fooled. He'd had the memory devices jammed into his skull before. He was an open book if Ba'al wanted him to be and that caused fury to surge through him. "I won't tell you what you want to know. I don't know anything. That snake kept me in the dark about everything."

The pseudo-Frasier made a note on her clipboard. "You're at the SGC in Colorado Springs. You've been here for three days." She walked over to his IV line. "I'm going to administer another sedative. Try to rest."

"No," he pleaded. "No, don't make me go under again. Don't revive me. Let me die… please…"

_He'd abandoned her. He felt it in his gut the second he and Kanan had blended. She'd loved him. She'd adored him. She'd seen the truth and had given him everything, but she had been frightened and he left her there. The guilt was new and unusual. In a war there were casualties. A handful of deaths, a smattering of betrayals, made sure a future rich in life and truth. Perhaps he'd been a soldier too long. A lifetime or two or three ago, he'd made vows. That was before, though. Before the Goa'uld had destroyed so much. The excuses didn't help him. He would never leave her. Not even if it meant he died._

She'd gone home finally. She intended to stay an hour; that's as much as Sam thought she could manage. She had wiped down the kitchen counter and for all the neglect her house had seen, the worst of the mess was a fine layer of dust from where she'd been far too busy to disturb anything she owned. A shower in her own bathroom washed away her mask. The steady stream of water drowned out the images of her commanding officer strapped to a bed because he was a danger to himself and to everyone around him. She needed Daniel. She needed to hear him tell her that Jack was going to be all right.

He had to be okay. There wasn't any other option.

"I want to help you," she whispered, leaning her forehead against wet tile.

These were her private moments. She was safe here, tucked away from a world that would condemn her for feelings she wasn't supposed to have. Sam had come home because she knew how it seemed to anyone else peering in. Teal'c would stand watch for her. Jonas tried to understand, and he was concerned for the colonel, but despite having been exiled from his own planet, he kept up an optimism to which she couldn't relate. Once upon a time she'd believed in happy endings. These days, she wasn't so sure anymore.

Salt on her tongue surprised her. She hadn't expected tears. Emotions she'd turned a blind eye to now demanded her attention. Guilt. Fear. Terror. Worry. They sat in a ball in her stomach, a knot that couldn't be undone. Her body shuddered as it let go of each one. She slid to the floor of her tub and she wept as deeply as she could. When the colonel had needed them to save him, she'd had a task to keep her mind occupied. Now that it was complete, now that she had to wait, she was forced to deal with the flood.

"I'm sorry."

_If his host didn't know, she would be safe. Ba'al wouldn't be able to extract anything from a person with no memory. It was a selfish plan, one with little regard for himself or the consciousness suppressed. All that mattered was that she made it. He didn't want to live in a world where she didn't exist. He'd told himself there were tactical advantages to bringing her back to the Tok'Ra with him, but if he dared to speak honestly, he couldn't erase the memories of whispered promises that he had thus far broken. She had seen his face and wondered if he were the same man she'd adored with her hands. He wasn't the same man, he was a better man._

"Kill me," he pleaded with the woman in a lab coat. "You can end this, once and for all."

"You're going to be okay, Colonel."

He wrestled against his restraints. "That son of a bitch is going to raise me from the dead over and over again. And I'm going to tell him. I'm going to tell him everything and he'll kill her."

"Colonel," the woman pretending to be Doctor Frasier warned. She sighed. It was patronizing and it made him angry.

It hurt every time he woke up. He was desperate for something he couldn't name, like a craving that was never sated, or a thirst never slaked. He wanted to be set free, but it was more than that. It wasn't mere freedom he was after. A sickening realization awoke in his mind. He was aching for the sarcophagus. Those few blessed moments before he fully grasped what was to happen to him again he felt so vividly alive and invincible.

"It's stealing my soul, Doc," he choked out. "You can't put me in there."

"I won't. I promise." She had pity written all over her. Jack wished he had a gun. He'd hit her first and then take himself out. Maybe if there were enough of his brain against the wall, Ba'al wouldn't be able to revive him.

She was there again, he noticed. Shallan stood watch over him like a guardian angel and he felt guilty that he hadn't saved her. He moved his lips to give her an apology, but his voice was stuck. His tongue held fast and he was weak through and through. He'd fought valiantly, he decided. Daniel had abandoned him. Maybe Daniel hadn't been there at all. Who knew what was real and what was in his head? He certainly couldn't tell.

Kanan had wanted to save her. He'd loved her, or at least, he'd thought he did. Jack wasn't entirely convinced that a Tok'Ra was capable of such raw emotion. The heartless snake hadn't done Jack any favors, using his body like a damn taxicab. Now he was going to die, strapped to a bed, only to awake in hell, over and over again. His single regret was that it was Shallan's face in front of him and not Carter's. Carter would have saved his ass by now.

"_Is it you?"_

_Her hand was small in his. She seemed fragile although he knew she was tougher than he was giving her credit for. She was afraid, but then again, so was he. That's what made it such damn fun. Open air was almost within reach. Alarms were screeching through the halls as they ran. As three Jaffa rounded the corner, he pulled her into an alcove. She pressed up against him, worry, fear, exhilaration reflected in her clear blue eyes. This was new for her. A world unthinkable now imagined and before her. He'd seen such wonder in those eyes a long time ago. They had been reflecting a shimmering pool in a gateway that promised the stars. _

She dared to venture into the room where Colonel O'Neill lay strapped like a prisoner. Sam had made a noble attempt to stay away. In the end, nightmares of him dying with her pleading for him to take the symbiote haunted her into an awakened, restless state. This was where she belonged, where her conscience demanded she stay, by the side of her commanding officer, wounded in battle because of…

"Shallan?" Jack's voice rasped out the name of Ba'al's lo'taur.

"It's me, sir. Carter." She hoped the familiar moniker would jolt him into recognizing that the world around him was real. "How are you feeling?"

"Carter?" He was confused and doubt permeated his timbre. "She's the reason."

Sam pressed her lips tightly together. "Yes, I'm the one who encouraged you to take the symbiote."

"No." He shook his head and grimaced in pain. "She's the reason. Kanan wasn't going to come back for you."

Damn it, she thought, he still thought she was Shallan. How long would this charade have to last? Janet said it would wear off, but there wasn't a timetable. They had no idea how many times the colonel had been stuffed into the sarcophagus.

"I know, sir," she agreed. Desperation coiled around her heart as she willed for him to know her, to trust her. "We figured that out. You have a strong sense of duty."

"You look like her. Like Carter."

A chill cut through Sam's torso and she wanted very much to escape the room. Lines better left untouched were within his reach. If he wanted to destroy walls when he was coherent, then so be it, but it wasn't right that his soul should be cut and flayed for everyone to see and judge. His emotional nakedness shamed her because of everything she had done; because of all the ways she had manipulated him. It was irrational for her to be this harsh with herself; that he was home was a testament to the rightness of her decision to push him in a particular direction. Emotions weren't often rational, however, and they chastised her for causing him undeserved humiliation.

"I should go."

He didn't hear her. He didn't see her. "That's why we went back. He. He went back. He didn't understand…"

She closed her eyes. "Sir. Please."

"I'd move heaven and earth, Shallan. So Kanan would too."

A tear escaped from the internal reservoir where she kept them silent and private, far from the curious gazes of those around her. Guilt better left buried threatened to explode within her thoughts because she had pretended not to know the truth.

"I'm sorry, sir." Her words were hurried and Sam turned away, unable to bear another moment. He needed to get better soon because seeing him like this was killing her.

_She stood over him, scrutinizing his visage. He blinked as she touched his cheek and she peered into his eyes, apparently looking for a sign. His eyes flashed so that she would know, so that she would see and understand. The glow startled her and froze, her fingertips still on his face. She was here. She was safe. The terror that had forced him into behavior anathema for a Tok'Ra subsided. He would rescue her and he would endure whatever punishment because she was worth it. She was worth everything. He knew he'd give his life for hers without half a thought and it was exhilarating. _

_Shallan pushed herself onto her toes. "Is it you?"_

He felt weak, but clear headed. That was a first in however long he'd been under detox. Jack made an effort to sit up; the room spinning forced him back against his pillow. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember what he could about the process. All he had were flashes of images. Doc Frasier, an unnamed nurse, were frequent characters. Carter. She had been there. She was still there. She was sitting on a chair, deeply engrossed in a book.

"Carter."

She looked up, her expression wary. "You recognize me, sir?" The doubt surprised him, and concerned him. Wisps out of reach were the words he couldn't recall.

"Of course I do," he answered. His tongue was thick and heavy. "Water?"

She laid the book aside and picked up a glass from across the room. Carefully she brought it to his lips and he sipped. It was a little embarrassing, but at this point, his thirst overrode any personal pride. He didn't trust his hands or his fingers. At least he finally trusted his own senses.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I partied really hard at my bachelor party last night," he joked. Her smile was tight and he saw the dark circles under her eyes. He couldn't thank her for what she couldn't acknowledge she'd done. If she had been anyone else, her vigil wouldn't have been fraught with undercurrents of unspoken confessions. Jack would have done the same for her.

"I wish that had been the case, sir." Neutral answers, carefully hedged words with no chance of misunderstanding, she knew her script well and he knew the lines too.

He shrugged. "I've been through worse." He cleared his dry throat. "I didn't say anything incriminating did I?"

"No, sir. Although you did think Janet was an agent of Ba'al." Carter wasn't telling him everything; he'd watched her long enough to know when she was holding her cards close.

"Good."

"I'll go let Janet know you're awake." She moved towards the door, and then hesitated. "Sir…" She avoided meeting his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"The symbiote."

Jack held up his hands as much as he could. "I'm alive."

"Yeah," she agreed. "You are."

"Thanks for saving my ass, Carter." It was the best he could give her and it wasn't good enough. She was perpetually on the other side of the forcefield and he couldn't reach her. He couldn't save her from the one person she needed rescuing from.

"Any time, sir."

One day, she would let him go. It was inevitable and when that day came, Jack wasn't sure if he would survive it or not. Until then, he rested in the fact that she hadn't given up on him and that despite everything he could never say, he absolutely loved her for it. And it hurt like hell.


End file.
